SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

The late aughts to early 2010s period seems to be epochal for infidelity. For most of us, this was the period when personal smartphones and unlimited data plans became an integral part of our lives. Reading past threads on SI as well as other sites and from first/second-hand knowledge of As within my family/friend/work network, I get a strong sense that there was drastic jump in affairs and ONS type hookups since then.

Prior to this time, the opportunities to stray were limited for most aspiring or potential waywards one would think. Unless you were the jetsetting world traveler, the pool of potential affair partners for most people was limited to friends, neighbors, coworkers and day to day acquaintances (church, gym, library etc). But as soon as Facebook became a thing, the spouse of someone I know had an affair with their former HS sweetheart who was living on the other coast when they reconnected via FB.

I see compelling arguments that suggest that smartphones, app proliferation, social media and such have:

a. Lowered the barrier to enter into an A
b. Expanded the pool of APs manifold
c. Enable people to keep affairing in secret using secure messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal etc.
d. Made it easy for potential waywards to connect with pro-A online echo chamber communities
e. Encourage adulterers to document graphic aspects of the A (sexts, videos, pics, selfies)

The last point is particularly salient to me. My fWW's A happened just before smartphones were prevalent. As bad as my mind movies were, I don't think I could've reconciled if there were videos, selfies or even a long trail of sexts. Gaining confidence about my fWW maintaining NC would've also been super hard if I had to worry about burner phones and hidden apps.

What do other SIers think about this? We have more than a few A survivors from the pre-smartphone age here. I mean this with no disrespect because I'm an "old" myself.

Just my opinion - FWIW and a dollar (inflation!!) will get you a cup of coffee.

Long time ago communication was via word-of-mouth or some form of written message which had to be delivered to intended reader(s).
Some messages took YEARS after writer penned their words on something to arrive at intended reader. Think of someone on a ship sending a message home. For example - it took 89 days for the fastest Clipper Ship to carry an item from New York to San Francisco.

Hard to have an affair/cheat or whatever if each others move takes weeks to communicate.

Now earthlings in developed areas of the world can instant message to anyone anywhere (with similar communications available) in less than a second.

Think of how many text-messages some cheaters have made to their paramour in a day - some examples on this board get into 100s.
Long time ago - that many instances of communication would have taken LIFEtimes.

So, yeah, now technology has enabled more cheating.

Another consideration is general sharing of information via all means of doing so. Now, we hear of "mass shooting" almost daily in many countries. But - is the human species really different? I don't think so. Look up the word "berserk" and it's historical etymology.
Humans have been cheating for a hundred thousand years and also "doing each other in" starting with tools of personal physical destruction such as clubs. (Think opening scene in 2001 Space Odyssey.)

Add in the changing levels of "me, me, me" self focused hedonistic bent of many people making headlines with the with the wonderful co-operational bent of news-something-people scrambling to fill their air time or column inches with titillating stories of moral degradation and you now have the world in which we live. Some folks consider some of the Roman and Greek activities to be their epitome of life's goals.

With modern computing power, even what is in print and picture is now subject to the fictional bent of anyone with means to afford the hardware. Pictures no longer can be trusted. Words we read can no longer be considered the writing of a human hand guided by a thinking brain.

Ya - modern technology has changed our world.

But there are still very many people who DO have integrity. Just seems harder to find such a one with which to pair.

Oh, Hippo! Can't get a cup of coffee for $1 around here!

I agree with the rest of your comments.

Nearly all operas are about some form of infidelity or another. Not many operas penned since the advent of electronic messaging…
I think it’s a way older issue.
After all – the demise of unaccountable and untraceable phone-booth calls has neither increased nor diminished infidelity or made R any harder or easier.

But…
Back when I was 20 or so nobody would hear a coarse joke or see an especially titillating pornographic picture and feel compiled to create 50 copies, address as many envelopes, lick 50 stamps and then distribute to all – irrespective of if the recipient was really wanting to see this stuff. Yet this was the norm – especially in the early days of email.

Nor did I ever think that photographing my penis and distributing that picture to potential girlfriends was going to beat trying to be interesting or charming. Yet sending unsolicited dick-pics and asking relatively newly-introduced women for nudies seems the norm rather than the exception.
(Heck… the only "nudie" I have sent my wife was to help her analyze a growth on one of my cheeks – and not a facial cheek…)

I’m not so certain the ease of electronic devices has made cheating easier or not. It definitely allows people to cast out more feelers, cover more ground or whatever. But… it’s a lot like suggesting faster cars makes bank-robberies more frequent because the thieves can cover a larger area.
I do however think that we might have misunderstood the constant growth for more freedom to include a growth of freedom without accountability or consequences. We forget accountability, the consequences of our own decisions and actions and that we are responsible for our own happiness. We have a generation that feels entitled – I am entitled to my freedom, my financial freedom and independence, my free-time, my body… whatever… without realizing that the decision to unite with someone in marriage or a monogamous relationship also includes the sacrifice of some of those "rights".

Generally, not a single-sided sacrifice. Like "sacrificing" cake might not sound good, but if it leads you to a better, healthier body then it’s worth it.

As with most things, I think it's complicated. I suspect it is simultaneously both easier to cheat and potentially easier to get caught.

What I mean is I think there are 2 types of people who remain faithful, those that do so because they think it's the right thing to do and would never cheat regardless of opportunity, and those who are faithful bc they never had the opportunity to cheat. For the first group, technology makes no difference. For the second group, I think it does. However, I also think the availability of potential other relationships causes some people to be more reluctant to get into monogamous relationships to begin with, so if more people from group 2 never get married, that would be better for all of us here.

The second piece is the ease of getting caught. Smart phones record everything, we have location sharing, and nothing on the internet can ever really be deleted. A smart cheater will remember this and attempt to delete everything, but a smart BS can often track down the info anyways. I caught my STBXH through technology, he handed me is phone to show me a picture and when he did his thumb hit the phone and scrolled to the previous picture, which was a naked picture of him. Without technology, I don't know if I would have ever found out. He had been cheating for over a year (at least, that I know about) and had apparently gotten lazy at hiding it.

I suspect it is simultaneously both easier to cheat and potentially easier to get caught.

I agree.

My DDay was before the advent of social media. AOL was a thing, though, and my H arranged a hookup via a chat room, but I don't think it could be tracked. (I could be wrong, but I think once you shut down the chat room, there was no record.) I think if he had tried to arrange a hookup online these days he would have left tracks that he's not savvy enough to completely cover.

I could be wrong about that too, though. He was a sneaky fucker back then. His last A was conducted strictly via email at work. He had a cell phone and texting was a thing, but he didn't use it to contact the AP at all.

I suspect that the incidence of people reconnecting with an old flame shot up when social media and smartphones became the norm.

I suspect it is simultaneously both easier to cheat and potentially easier to get caught.

This!

If I may add a corollary to this,

It is simultaneously both easier to cheat, potentially easier to get caught and arguably harder to reconcile because what was previously mostly left to imagination is now in your face as an animated gif or viral video

I can say with a high degree of confidence that if there were pictures or videos or hundreds of explicit texts of my fWW's A, I would not have even considered R. Maybe it's misogynistic of me but there is no way I'd even considering fathering a child with a partner in this situation. I'd rather die than stomach the idea of exposing my child to the risk of exposure to videos of their mom being railed by a rando on some amateur porn site. I bet I'm not the only BP to think like this.

[This message edited by Ragn3rK1n at 12:28 AM, Tuesday, February 13th]